


Alone

by bitterest



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Adamant Fortress, Bittersweet, Comfort/Angst, M/M, POV Multiple, Purple Hawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 07:01:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12163863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitterest/pseuds/bitterest
Summary: After Hawke is left in the fade at Adamant fortress, Fenris receives a disturbing letter. Subsequently he sets out to either free Hawke or avenge him, this journey takes him to Skyhold. Where he uses the unhealthy coping mechanism that is violence to gently solicit the help of the Inquisition.





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time posting anything here, I hope you enjoy my interpretation of these characters and their relationships!

Chapter 1: The letter

The sun was hot in MInrathous and the pungent air was thick enough to choke on. The docks bustled with sailors and merchants, the lash of a slaver’s whip carrying through the air as it landed on the sweat slick backs of reluctant workers.  
It was a terrible cacophony, all these people clambering through the thick smell of brine and old fish to destinations that did not matter; at least, not to the elf sitting half slumped in the thick of it.  
He did not sit off to the side, and most passers by had to go quite out of their way to pass around him. None of them kicked up a fuss about this however; the elf perching on the barrel had the sort of murderous look on his face, that did not inspire conversation. Let alone admonishment.  
So they hurried on, and none looked twice at his anger, at least not long enough to see the precipitous sadness there. 

Fenris crumpled the already mangled letter, his thoughts were so chaotic all he could manage at this point was anger. The sort of anger that bled into your bones like a physical thing.  
“You promised.” he muttered softly to himself, the statement edged with disbelief. His hand coming unconsciously to the ribbon at his wrist, and resting there.  
Minrathous was as hot as he remembered and for the life of him he could not remember why it had been so important for him to come, there had been so many options, all of them more practical than chasing after ghosts in this city of slaves.  
So yes he was angry, misguided though his anger may have been. To receive word about something like this, signed so damn casually: ‘from the pen of Varric Tethras’, Varric fucking Tethras. He was going to break him in half. Not metaphorically, that was Varric’s area of expertise. Fenris, was more the literal sort.  
When the letter had first come he had briefly entertained the notion that the dwarf had set up an elaborate, if distasteful, prank. However, this thought was quashed quickly for as long as he had known Varric, although he was doubtless a liar, he was not cruel.  
He couldn't process any of the information at first, although the bulk of it was written in rather simplistic terms, it was not the sort of information one could simply comprehend and move on from.  
The speculation and the finality of the news, it would drive him mad. He was no stranger to death, had never seen mortality as a foreign and terrible thing. It would come and it would take him eventually. This was the way of things, and he accepted it, or thought he had. Hawke had seemed a presence beyond such things, as constant as the breath in his lungs.  
This was more uncertain news than death, and more terrible somehow.  
He boarded the first craft out of Minrathous, it was a deep bellied cargo-ship with very little room for an extra passenger, the captain was a sensible man however, and did not refuse the gold offered. The transaction was made more even more prompt with the threat of grievous bodily harm, demonstrated casually on an unsuspecting wooden crate, which spilled its cargo of silk onto the deck; where it pooled like blood. 

The ship, was not built for speed but rather stability and it carried him slowly across the waking sea. Sitting there in his cabin (that was more a cupboard then living space,) as the rock of the waves slammed him against the splintered wooden walls. He read that letter over and over until the words, words he wouldn't have even been able to read before… him.  
Were memorized down to the last ink splotches, made by what he assumed was a shaking hand, a hand that never shook. A writer's hand, Shaking. The time in the ship, was different from any misery had suffered. Pain and degradation had come in abundance during his lifetime, early enough that his skin had thickened to such things.  
This was a different beast entirely. A stagnant, all encompassing presence.  
The ship was comfortable, despite the small quarters. The food was sailors fare, bad, but he did not remember it in any detail. The misery was in the yellowing parchment balled in his fist, inanimate saboteur in the noxious confinement of his head. Sleepless, and mired in all the possibilities left over in the blank spaces. In the ink blotches, in the hesitant details. And most significantly in the phrase “lost to us, a hero in the end,”  
In beautiful scrolling cursive.  
The journey was long and months had passed with no news to latch onto, he felt detached and feral as he stumbled from the ship, filthy and with darting eyes.  
Ferelden was an ugly, barren place. Made more so by the approach of winter. He did not linger, He purchased a travelling cloak and rations in the port, then promptly hired a wagon to take him to the base of the mountains, where nestled at the top, lay Skyhold. Or as Fenris had begun to think of it; catharsis of the violent sort.  
The Frostbacks were beautiful, and in a small way redeemed the hideous marshlike brown of the lowlands. He tried not to be bitter, the land was not to blame. Dangerous and cold as sin, but guiltless in his personal misery. The place had given him Hawke, that enough was worth gratitude.  
The air thinned and the wagon rattled on loose stones. The path narrowed as they drew higher and only the lash of the whip urged the horses onward as the wind screamed vengefully against them. The driver, a meek elvish male, with a fading vallaslin, obscured further by the deep lines of age had long given up on small talk, so the road was quiet, and Fenris felt very little of the journey, just the weight of the paper tucked in his pack.  
When the path became too harsh for even the hearty Ferelden packhorses, Fenris set out alone, poorly bundled and frowning deeply. Despite the half-hearted protests of the driver. 

Hawke was too stubborn to die, it was a fundamental aspect of his character; the defiance of odds that for any other would certainly result in death. Or maiming, usually maiming.  
Hawke was somewhere stuck in that Maker-forsaken hell. Trying to escape. To come back to him, the fade was less strange to him now, once before they had escaped it. It was in no way impossible.  
He was a mage after all, he had some protection there. Didn’t he? All this speculation did not bring Fenris any measure of comfort, and he trudged on.  
Fenris walked over jagged pathways by the light of few stars, obscured by cataracts of wind whipped cloud. Past the smouldering ruin of the temple of sacred ashes, and beyond the rubble that once was haven. Fenris walked until his feet began to bleed, his blood was as red as the slash across Hawke's nose, red as the token on his wrist.  
He stopped a few times, to eat, and to tend the wounds, but in all the white and grey of the mountains all he could see was red, and it drove him forward.  
So he walked until his armour began to rust in the cold and his rations grew thin, as Hawke had grown thin. Worry lines on his face, dark circles under his eyes.  
Always so worried about the rest of the world. Even his defensive sarcasm had waned into pacing those last days before his departure, when word of the fate of the conclave, and the attack on the budding inquisition in haven spread to them. Holed up in that little Inn, with nothing but their ragged armour and the little bed they shared, so close to the place that had once been Lothering. Cocooned as they had been in escapism, the guilt of passivity had forced them from their refuge. As Hawke lifted his staff and shrugged on a travelling coat, dragged again by the noose of his heroism. Fenris had not asked him to stay, he had just stared pointedly out the window, hands clenched on the windowsill.  
“I suppose I’ll go to Minrathous then, I have some things to settle.” He had said, hoping his eyes said more than the scope of his words.  
“I’ll see if I can find a souvenir in Skyhold for you then.” Hawke had replied simply, smiling the stupid half-smile that Fenris had never quite developed an immunity to.“How do you feel about a stunning new hat?” he had continued airily “with a feather or something, you know, Isabela style.” Fenris had snorted, hands unclenching.  
“I don’t need a hat.” He had said as he dragged Hawke into a firm kiss. A kiss that had stayed on his lips long after Hawkes figure was no longer visible on the horizon.

As he approached the wide stone bridge, he saw Skyhold as Hawke must have. A looming stone giant, a fortress armoured by snow and mist. There was a power to this place that made it seem older somehow, a place outside of time, wreathed in a majesty unique to holy places. Normally reserved for the hushed silence of a chantry, and the shiver before offering a prayer to an absent, unfamiliar god. He caught his breath, and saw at once why the common had deified its leader, risking accusations of blasphemy: ‘Herald of Andraste.’  
Of the man himself, Inquisitor Lavellan, there was little known. He did not want to know the sort of coward who would leave a man to rot in the fade, he knew all he needed to know.  
No matter what he was in the end, what was certain was that he could bleed.  
He resolved himself, armour creaking as he crossed onto cobbled stone. He would have the Inquisitor rip the fade open again, as he had at Adamant, and Fenris would drag Hawke out, kicking and flailing, no matter what came out with him.  
If Hawke was dead, Fenris stopped, pausing on the bridge where he stood. Reeling not from the height but from the dropping sensation inside of him. As though the world had oriented itself improperly, a gangrenous and familiar emotion filled him, it’s black claws flexing with each breath. If Hawke was dead, then, what?  
Why hadn't he asked to join him? He had been hurt when Hawke set out alone, and his pride had forced him into sullen quiet. Into his own unfinished tasks, into his own ever present anger. It was three days into his journey to Minrathous, in the middle of storm tossed water. When he realized he was too far away to help Hawke if necessary, he had then casually assuaged his own uncertainty, by resolving that Hawke would have all the help he could ever want in Skyhold.  
This apparently, had not been the case.  
Hawke hadn't left him, not when it mattered. In Kirkwall when his past again and again reared its ugly head; and even after it all came down in flames.  
He had stayed when Fenris had been alone with nothing but Varanias blood on his hands, a slow boiling shame, and enough anger to set fire to the whole world.  
Even when his bitterness towards mages struck out and he saw the hurt flicker in those amber eyes. He had stayed. He had tried to understand, had understood.  
I am here Fenris.  
I am here.  
He wasn't here anymore was he?  
If Hawke was gone then he was truly, alone.


End file.
